Exclusive: Club Pro Guy Explains It All

Where were you on September 4, 2024? That day of infamy was, of course, when Club Pro Guy abruptly retired from public life. The news hit Golf Twitter like a thunderbolt. For the preceding decade, CPG had developed a cult following thanks to his irreverent humor and prodigious output on social media.

He spoofed the mundane life of a club pro while poking fun at everyone and everything in the golf world. Over the years, CPG developed an entire ecosystem replete with memorable sidekicks, absurd instructional tutorials and often inappropriate reminisces of his spotty career on the Mexican mini-tours. CPG’s hasty retirement left a gaping hole in the much-too-serious golf world.

While his true identity remains a closely guarded secret, CPG admitted to me that he suffered burnout from creating all of that content on his own. He was also disenchanted by the fractious state of professional golf. A particular disappointment came in the runup to the 2023 Ryder Cup, when U.S. captain Zach Johnson requested a cheeky video from CPG to ease the tension in his team room. But, on the eve of the competition, Johnson’s inner circle talked him out of showing the video to the team. (More on that below.)

But now, in the most stunning turn of events since Jay and Yasir pressed flesh on CNBC, Club Pro Guy is back. As of today, he is dropping a bevy of new material behind a paywall at clubproguy.com. CPG will continue to expand on his previous universe—he recently unearthed the lost diaries from his years in Mexico—and drop a slew of new offerings: a weekly newsletter every Monday with his idiosyncratic take on current events; daily fantasy coverage; featured beer cart girls from around the globe; movie reviews of the golf oeuvre; a math-free version of the OWGR; and deeper dives on instruction and handicap management.

The relaunch is due in part to extensive lobbying efforts from Paul Koehorst, the co-author of the 2023 book Club Pro Guy’s Other Black Book.

“There’s so little good golf comedy content out there,” says Koehorst, a one-time writer for Jimmy Kimmel, Carson Daly, Ryan Seacrest and other late-night TV fare. “There is very little funny commentary on the increasingly insane world of golf. When you talk about equipment, fashion, the messiness of the professional game, this weird world of influencers—there is now golf news happening 365 days a year, and we need Club Pro Guy at the forefront of all of that.”

Koehorst will write the weekly newsletter and contribute in various other ways. “We have tons of ideas,” he says, “but let’s see what kind of work ethic Club Pro Guy has after being on vacation for the last seven months.”

Without further ado, let’s hear from the man himself in this exclusive interview with Skratch.

AS: So why are you coming back now?

CPG: I couldn’t stay away. Golf is in my blood. Plus I’m dead broke. Last fall after I got fired as a club pro I thought it would be a great opportunity to spread my wings and join the corporate world. With all my years experience running a pro shop I figured I would thrive in that environment. Then around the Holidays I had a really unique opportunity fall in my lap. I saw on LinkedIn that a little known government agency called USAID was looking for someone with a strong golf background to go to Honduras to be an Assistant Project Manager for an important study. Apparently a non-governmental organization called Women for Equitable Tees (WET) was able to secure a $1.2 billion federal grant to do a study on how calling the red tee boxes the “Ladies Tees” instead of the “forward tees” promotes misogyny in rural Honduras. My compensation was great and I literally didn’t do shit, but unfortunately DOGE shut us down a few weeks ago. I’m not blaming anyone specifically but let’s just say I won’t be buying a Tesla anytime soon. Anyway, when I got back Stateside my options were limited, so returning to golf was really the only move that made sense.

I just need to bridge the gap financially from now until my mom dies. She’s been on dialysis for four years and somehow keeps cranking along. I cringe every time she goes to Silver Dollar City with her Bunko group because I’m like "Well, there goes another $400 of my inheritance….but what are ya gonna do?

AS: Don’t you think you owed it to the fans to keep going?

I’ve always felt bad for the students who followed me and then one day they woke up and I wasn’t there. Imagine you've been going to the same doctor for years to cure a life-threatening cancer and one day you go to his office and he's gone. That's the kind of hold I had over my students. So my sudden absence had to be jarring.

Nothing illustrates that better than a letter I received in early February from a guy in Pennsylvania. I’m paraphrasing a little but he said that when I retired from social media he was an 18.6 and coming off the best season of his life. He had won three separate member/guests, had a war chest of $860 in shop credit, and won his first ever ‘C’ Flight club championship by closing with a pair of gross 74’s to win by 29. Basically a Tiger 2000 type season. But unfortunately, ever since I left things had fallen apart. He’s been hard capped at a 6.9, suspended from his men’s league, lost several of his closest friends, and worst of all, had his “NET Golfer of the Year” parking sign vandalized. The bottom line is this never would have happened if I was still there to help him manage his index, and it cost him….big time.

AS: Why exactly did you walk away from the golf industry?

CPG: I was let go. Plain and simple. Twenty four years as a club professional gone… just like that. The funny thing is, if you were to ask anyone in the industry, most of the reasons they listed for my dismissal are things considered standard operating procedure for club pros: Skimming a couple bucks from the range ball machine, accepting gratuities for preferential tee times, kickbacks from sales reps, selling items from the lost found, having sex with members’ wives…this is all stuff guys have been doing since forever. The truth is, I was railroaded because they thought I was getting too big for the club. Semi-private clubs have a tendency to be so full of themselves. It’s nauseating.

I gave my blood, sweat, and other bodily fluids to that place and for them to do me like that was disappointing.

AS: What was the hardest part about being famous?

CPG: Fame never really bothered me—I always thought it went hand in hand with being a successful professional athlete. It’s what I signed up for. But the crazy thing is I'm probably more well known now as a teacher than I ever was as a tour player, and that's all because of social media. Now that I’m a top tier teacher I get recognized a lot more, and it’s not only in golf circles. I walked into Rent-a-Center a few days ago to dispute a late fee and the guy behind the counter instantly recognized me from one of my videos. We spent the next 20 minutes talking about his bunker game.

Compare that to when I played on tour throughout the 90’s: back then it was very difficult to get reliable information on our tour unless you subscribed to Mexican Mini-Tour Monthly or actually went to one of our events in person. Believe it or not, at the height of my playing career in Mexico I could walk into a bodega or a grocery store and not get recognized by a single person. Think about that for a second. In the afternoon I'm in a dog fight on the course with a legend like Nacho Morales and just a few hours later I'm in line next to a civilian and they don't even recognize me. It's nuts.

AS: It sounds like you never got over the disappointment of Capt. Johnson not showing his team the video he requested you make for the 2023 Ryder Cup. Is that an indictment of how soft the U.S. team is?

CPG: At the time, I was a little disappointed the video wasn’t shown because I worked pretty hard on that message and really believed the team could benefit from hearing from someone like me who had “been through the fire” before. But I don’t really blame Zach for the last minute decision to not show it. I just think when you have so many well intentioned people in your ear in a pressure cooker environment like that, there can be a tendency to play it safe. Looking back, it probably wasn’t a great idea for me to be introducing specific swing tips, assigning the guys to “pods”, and giving last minute strategy advice to the team the night before the biggest event of their lives….but who knows?

One thing I can say about Zach Johnson is that he could not have been nicer and better to work with on the making of that video. The amount of shit he took (and still takes) for that beatdown in Rome is totally unfair in my opinion. Captains put out world class players to compete in these matches and they either play well or they don’t. A great example of that is the Saturday foursomes in Rome. The guy runs out Scottie Scheffler, the undisputed #1 player in the world with Brooks Koepka, who is a certified killer, and they get their asses handed to them like 9 and 7. First off, how is that possible? And secondly, how is that Zach Johnsons' fault? It reminds me of when I captained the 1994 Tecate Cup team against Guatemala and we lost 23.5 to 4.5 and eight of my players never saw the 14th tee the entire event. I didn’t hit a single shot. So you can’t put that on me. My guys played like shit.

The bottom line is being a captain on one of these teams is a thankless job and quite frankly, not worth the risk.

AS: You had a lot of time to consume the changing golf media—are you now rebranding yourself as an influencer or a content creator?

I’ve been amazed at the changes I’ve seen over the last few years in the way people consume golf. We’ve gotten to a point where more people watch a bunch of Gen Z dipshits running around playing golf on YouTube than watch the Saturday broadcast of The Memorial. It’s crazy. Now, personally I don’t watch that type of stuff for the same reason Lamar Jackson doesn’t watch a bunch of frat bros play flag football on YouTube….what’s the point? The whole genre is bizarre and pathetic and it’s definitely something I want to get in on.

In full disclosure I hate wearing my hat backwards and I can’t do joggers, but I’ll do almost anything else to make the kind of money these guys are making. So to answer your original question, I now officially consider myself an influencer and a content creator. But unlike some of the more well-known folks out there, like say Rick Shiels or Fat Perez, I can actually play the game. I actually have a resume. I played over 12 years on the Mexican Mini-Tour. People respect that and it gives me enormous credibility.

That’s why I'm launching the Club Pro Guy “Learning Center,” which is a monthly subscription service that will get you access to the best quality golf content on the Internet. I think my "fans" sort of owe it to me. I mean, I've been giving them invaluable instruction for years and all they've had to do was watch a ten-second Blue Chew ad before the YouTube video started. It’s time to settle up, if you know what I mean.

AS: Now that you’re instituting a paywall, might there be a collab with Holly Sonders?

CPG: Listen, I’d do a collab with Patrick Reed on the Rules of Golf if it gets me clicks and subscribers. My DM's are always open. The whole purpose of the paywall is to allow me the opportunity to give my subscribers “graduate” level instruction and theory. The type of stuff you can’t get anywhere else. So many instructors today focus solely on trying to make players better, which is well intentioned but leaves out a key component: The GHIN system. My instruction includes making players better, while at the same time making their handicaps worse. That’s how you dominate flighted club championships, that’s how you win member/guests, and thats how you amass enormous amounts of shop credit. And at the end of the day, that's what its all about

AS: Can you give us an update on Three Jack National?

CPG: It’s a mess. Dealing with the local, state and federal government has made the project almost unworkable. The mountains of bureaucratic red tape I’ve had to contend with makes me wonder how anything gets built in this country anymore. I sent a letter to the state of Kansas to request that southbound 635 highway be re-routed to make room for member cottages along the first fairway…DENIED. I asked the federal government to declare Eminent Domain on the low income neighborhood just west of the property because I needed those homes bulldozed to make room for a par 3 course…DENIED. I asked the local government for up front cash in lieu of future tax abatements so I could purchase flat screen TV's for the men’s grill…DENIED. I asked the EPA for a waiver regarding the lethal amounts of Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) found in soil samples throughout the property…DENIED! Ridiculous road blocks at every turn. We have over 5,000 members who I'm trying to do right by but big government is stonewalling me. No one has been able to hit a single golf shot yet, and at this point I’m starting to wonder if they ever will. Sadly, none of the members will get their money back because all of the proceeds have been spent on overhead, my consulting fees and whatnot but thats business. Hopefully we can eventually get the project back on track but….who knows.

AS: So what are your goals and dreams for this second chapter of your career?

My girlfriend Renata asked me that same question recently and it’s a difficult one to answer. Obviously I want financial security but I’m also starting to think about legacy. A hundred years from now when someone asks who was the best NET instructor of the 21st century, I want my name to be on that list. I'd also love to find my own Tiger Woods type student, maybe someone I can groom to be the first player in the world with over $10K in shop credit? It’s a dream of mine. Bottom line is I want to be thought of in the same category as Hank Haney before he was cancelled, or Sean Foley before he started wearing a fanny pack. There's not many guys out there who had the playing career I enjoyed and then was able to follow that up with an elite teaching career as well. I think that’s what sets me apart. At the end of the day I just want to make a contribution to the game of golf, with a strong emphasis on making as much money as I can as fast as I can, period.